So far, tablets are basically giant consumption devices. Listen to music, read books, watch videos, visit other people's websites. Not so much made for creating (unless the limit of creating, your case, is writing blog updates).
Well, I'm not sure whether it's literally true that Damon Albarn recorded and mixed an entire Gorillaz album on an iPad -- but let's admit that it's vaguely plausible.
It seems to me that the multitouch tablet is a brilliant form factor for many kinds of music creation app -- be it a standalone app or a control surface for another computer/instrument.
I thought Android devices were "open"; if so shouldn't one be able to change their OS more easily?
Other people have given accurate answers, but just for clarity -- most Android phones consist of an "open" OS on a "closed" device.
Imagine you're designing a vending machine. You can use a 100% free Linux distro as its core OS. But you can hide every data interface behind a padlock such that your customer can't install a different Linux, or install extra applications -- they just have access to the coinbox and the product selection buttons. You could include your own non-free software on there -- the application that manages the vending for example might be non-free.
A typical Android phone is pretty much analogous to that, except that the locks are in software.
Don't beat yourself up about it. Japan needs the money. Haiti needs the money. Thousands of other causes need the money. Whoever you give to -- be it money or time -- it won't be wasted.
If you're worried about Japan ending up with more than they need (!) then donate to a general purpose aid organisation (I like Oxfam, but then I'm British) and let them spend it the way they see fit.
It is a bit of a stretch, but I bet they thought that waves would also hit India much like they hit Hawaii and California.
By washing over the whole of Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar? Or by picking its way through the Indonesian sea? Or perhaps by doing a u-turn around Australia?
10,000 dead?! Are you counting people who might die in 20 years of cancer?
No, 10,000 killed on the day of the tsunami. Have they neglected to mention this on the news wherever you live?
OK, they've not done a full and accurate count yet, and many people are unaccounted for. But the death toll is expected to exceed 10,000. It's devastating.
Indeed, 220,000 died in Haiti -- smaller quake, less developed country. Things are still desperate over there, so after donating to Japan, maybe spare a little for Haiti.
It seems to me that when the disaster scenario is a partially uncontained nuclear meltdown, the risk/reward ratio is a *lot* worse.
There have been no deaths due to the meltdown at Three Mile Island. WHO estimates about 3500 deaths associated with long-term effects from Chernobyl. You consider this a *lot* worse than 10,000 acute deaths from a tsunami? Why?
I didn't say the outcome was worse. I said the risk/reward ratio was worse. If a/b > c/d it does not follow that a > c.
I'm saying the economic value of all that living/working on low coastal land must have been *huge*, *maybe* high enough to outweigh the risk.... and the value of siting the nuclear power station just there? Relative to the risk? Not as good I don't think.
The facility shouldn't have been built there; or, its defences should have been better.
You do know that there hasn't been any release of radioactive material yet, right?
Perhaps I've missed something; if there are unusually high radiation levels outside the reactor building -- high enough to evacuate staff -- doesn't that mean radioactive material has been released?
I work for a multinational company. On our internal system, someone in Bangalore broadcast the news about the Japanese earthquake soon after it happened. The first response? An American saying "We're hearing about it on the news. I sure hope you're OK in India."
1. This is the fourth-largest earthquake ever recorded on Earth, ever.
2. See point 1. They had a big fucking seawall; the tsunami was bigger.
I'm afraid that's not good enough. People have only been recording earthquakes for some 100 years. Seismologists knew a big one could happen pretty much any time, and they knew it would result in a tsunami.
You might say it was foolish to build *anything* within reach of a tsnunami -- I mean, 10,000 deaths projected. Let's guess that the risk/reward ratios work out so that, as grim as it sounds, those deaths and the cost of all the rebuilding, are outweighed by the benefits. It seems to me that when the disaster scenario is a partially uncontained nuclear meltdown, the risk/reward ratio is a *lot* worse.
The facility shouldn't have been built there; or, its defences should have been better.
The Squire Rock Band Pro controller is essentially a MIDI guitar. And the Mad Katz Rock Band Pro controller is a bank of buttons controlled with guitar-like hand shapes, that could also be used as a MIDI controller.
You raise an interesting point, that these game controllers could be adopted by OSS developers in the same way as the Kinect has been.
Then again, "real" MIDI guitars aren't that expensive.
Hmm, I tend to bittorrent stuff because I'm too lazy to go the official route.
Bittorrent: (assuming a BT client is installed) click link. Wait. AVI is on my disk. Official route: a bunch of form filling, trailer watching, requiring a viewer with DRM extensions, etc.
I can watch non-DRM'd AVIs on my TV using my Xbox. I have to watch iPlayer on my laptop. Yes, I could plug my laptop into my TV, but there are various problems with that, which I'm too lazy to describe here, let alone resolve.
I agree, but why not make a device that just takes input from an actual guitar, and interprets whether you are hitting the right notes, without a need to have a special guitar.
Er, that's exactly what TFA is about. Rocksmith will do frequency analysis of the signal from an ordinary electric guitar.
The risk is that it won't work as well as a special guitar controller. The poshest Rock Band Pro guitar is a real guitar, but has electronics in the neck to detect when a string is pressed against the each fret, presumably because Harmonix felt they couldn't do polyphonic frequency analysis accurately enough for the job.
From what I can see, the biggest downside to this is that they couldn't make a strong enough neck, while keeping within budget and fitting in the electronics -- so the Rock Band guitar has warnings against stringing it with any strings heavier than a set of 9s.
I like the idea of Rock Band 3, as a practice tool, but the money spent on that guitar could go towards a *nice* guitar.
I guess they should stop putting those marker dots between frets?
I think most guitarists at least glance at the fretboard when they're playing. I don't think I could reliably go from a chord at the nut to a barre on the 9th, blindfold.
But, I don't think you'll have much time to look at the fretboard in this game -- you'll be effectively sight-reading a tab as it scrolls past you.
This is the point: you want to play guitar, you just buy one. You want to learn to play, you might choose self-learning if you don't want to throw money at lessons. (Of course, you just want to have a nice time with friends, you go and play with them and be happy.)
I've played real guitar for 20 years.
I've watched videos of the Rock Band 3 "pro guitar" being used, and it looks like it would be a productive way of teaching yourself to play the guitar parts in those songs. It really is like following a tab, with a machine to tell you when you screw up. I assume there are practice options as in other Rock Band games, where you can isolate the part, slow it down, practice with a metronome etc.
Once you'd learned it, you'd need to plug into a real amp and practice some more to coax any kind of expression out of it, since Rock Band 3 doesn't concern itself with niceties such as muting and vibrato.
I'm not personally the kind of player who likes to replicate other people's solos -- but plenty of people are, and plenty of people enjoy listening to that. There's still value in doing this if you're an improviser, since it may reveal to you fingerings that you can incorporate into your improvisations.
It seems to me that art is considered great based on the amount of emotional response it stirs up in the person interacting or observing whatever medium the art is based on.
TFA rebuts this with the example of a video of someone stomping on animals.
That said, loop it, give it a pretentious title, and display it in a gallery -- someone would call it art.
By the way a lot of non modern art isn't meant to inspire, force contemplation of life or challenge your philosophical views... it's simply meant to be pretty and nothing else.
A lot of modern art (for certain definitions of modern) is meant to make you think about the the definition of "art", as we are doing now.
Duchamp's urinal, discussed in TFA, is a prime example of that. Duchamp is effectively saying to the viewer "OK, you think you know what art is -- but I've signed my name on a urinal I bought ready-made, given it a title, and they're showing it in a gallery. And you're standing looking at it, stroking your chin."
And then, as if to make things even harder, the first one's lost. There are several in galleries -- none more valid than the other. They're signed as Duchamp pieces, but he had an assistant fake his signature.
Now, you might look at something like that, and say, "no, in my opinion that's not art". But you'd be in disagreement with the "art world" -- the people who decide what goes in galleries -- so you'd be obliged to give it some thought. And having provoked that thought, does the piece now qualify as art?
If everything I had just described was a lie -- if in fact nobody has put a urinal in an art gallery; they've just talked about it -- would the the reflection about the nature of art that it inspires be just as valid? Or does the concept only become worthwhile when you implement it? What if I made a "game" in which I just plonked a urinal from a 3D model library into the Quake, and allowed you to virtually walk around it?
Slashdot Mirror
He said "in the history of general-purpose computing", so Nintendo doesn't count.
Of course, it's a truism that every one has failed, apart from the ones that are still going...
The difference being, netbooks were cheap. iPads are not. Android tablets might be; we'll see.
So far, tablets are basically giant consumption devices. Listen to music, read books, watch videos, visit other people's websites. Not so much made for creating (unless the limit of creating, your case, is writing blog updates).
Well, I'm not sure whether it's literally true that Damon Albarn recorded and mixed an entire Gorillaz album on an iPad -- but let's admit that it's vaguely plausible.
It seems to me that the multitouch tablet is a brilliant form factor for many kinds of music creation app -- be it a standalone app or a control surface for another computer/instrument.
I refer m'learned friend to the millions of iPhone users.
Including many who post right here on Slashdot to protest that they don't care one jot what Apple prevents them from doing.
I thought Android devices were "open"; if so shouldn't one be able to change their OS more easily?
Other people have given accurate answers, but just for clarity -- most Android phones consist of an "open" OS on a "closed" device.
Imagine you're designing a vending machine. You can use a 100% free Linux distro as its core OS. But you can hide every data interface behind a padlock such that your customer can't install a different Linux, or install extra applications -- they just have access to the coinbox and the product selection buttons. You could include your own non-free software on there -- the application that manages the vending for example might be non-free.
A typical Android phone is pretty much analogous to that, except that the locks are in software.
Don't beat yourself up about it. Japan needs the money. Haiti needs the money. Thousands of other causes need the money. Whoever you give to -- be it money or time -- it won't be wasted.
If you're worried about Japan ending up with more than they need (!) then donate to a general purpose aid organisation (I like Oxfam, but then I'm British) and let them spend it the way they see fit.
The facility shouldn't have been built there; or, its defences should have been better.
If I sat around at work bitching and whining like this about something which has already happened and can't be undone, I'd be reprimanded.
How do you learn from mistakes, if you don't recognise them when they happen?
It is a bit of a stretch, but I bet they thought that waves would also hit India much like they hit Hawaii and California.
By washing over the whole of Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar? Or by picking its way through the Indonesian sea? Or perhaps by doing a u-turn around Australia?
10,000 dead?! Are you counting people who might die in 20 years of cancer?
No, 10,000 killed on the day of the tsunami. Have they neglected to mention this on the news wherever you live?
OK, they've not done a full and accurate count yet, and many people are unaccounted for. But the death toll is expected to exceed 10,000. It's devastating.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/mar/17/japan-nuclear-crisis-tsunami-aftermath#block-28 - "The death toll from the earthquake and tsunami is expected to exceed 10,000"
Indeed, 220,000 died in Haiti -- smaller quake, less developed country. Things are still desperate over there, so after donating to Japan, maybe spare a little for Haiti.
It seems to me that when the disaster scenario is a partially uncontained nuclear meltdown, the risk/reward ratio is a *lot* worse.
There have been no deaths due to the meltdown at Three Mile Island. WHO estimates about 3500 deaths associated with long-term effects from Chernobyl. You consider this a *lot* worse than 10,000 acute deaths from a tsunami? Why?
I didn't say the outcome was worse. I said the risk/reward ratio was worse. If a/b > c/d it does not follow that a > c.
I'm saying the economic value of all that living/working on low coastal land must have been *huge*, *maybe* high enough to outweigh the risk. ... and the value of siting the nuclear power station just there? Relative to the risk? Not as good I don't think.
The facility shouldn't have been built there; or, its defences should have been better.
You do know that there hasn't been any release of radioactive material yet, right?
Perhaps I've missed something; if there are unusually high radiation levels outside the reactor building -- high enough to evacuate staff -- doesn't that mean radioactive material has been released?
Sure, the 10,000 (projected) dead; the orphaned kids; the entire towns swept away. "Thank you for your concern but it's OK"...
Tsk.
To be fair to the comic, I guess it was published before the full details were known. You don't have that excuse.
I work for a multinational company. On our internal system, someone in Bangalore broadcast the news about the Japanese earthquake soon after it happened. The first response? An American saying "We're hearing about it on the news. I sure hope you're OK in India."
Maps are useful.
1. This is the fourth-largest earthquake ever recorded on Earth, ever.
2. See point 1. They had a big fucking seawall; the tsunami was bigger.
I'm afraid that's not good enough. People have only been recording earthquakes for some 100 years. Seismologists knew a big one could happen pretty much any time, and they knew it would result in a tsunami.
You might say it was foolish to build *anything* within reach of a tsnunami -- I mean, 10,000 deaths projected. Let's guess that the risk/reward ratios work out so that, as grim as it sounds, those deaths and the cost of all the rebuilding, are outweighed by the benefits. It seems to me that when the disaster scenario is a partially uncontained nuclear meltdown, the risk/reward ratio is a *lot* worse.
The facility shouldn't have been built there; or, its defences should have been better.
Does Guitar Pro analyse what you're playing, and alert you when you miss a note?
If not (and as far as I can see, it doesn't), then it's nothing like this game.
The Squire Rock Band Pro controller is essentially a MIDI guitar. And the Mad Katz Rock Band Pro controller is a bank of buttons controlled with guitar-like hand shapes, that could also be used as a MIDI controller.
You raise an interesting point, that these game controllers could be adopted by OSS developers in the same way as the Kinect has been.
Then again, "real" MIDI guitars aren't that expensive.
Hmm, I tend to bittorrent stuff because I'm too lazy to go the official route.
Bittorrent: (assuming a BT client is installed) click link. Wait. AVI is on my disk.
Official route: a bunch of form filling, trailer watching, requiring a viewer with DRM extensions, etc.
I can watch non-DRM'd AVIs on my TV using my Xbox. I have to watch iPlayer on my laptop. Yes, I could plug my laptop into my TV, but there are various problems with that, which I'm too lazy to describe here, let alone resolve.
I agree, but why not make a device that just takes input from an actual guitar, and interprets whether you are hitting the right notes, without a need to have a special guitar.
Er, that's exactly what TFA is about. Rocksmith will do frequency analysis of the signal from an ordinary electric guitar.
The risk is that it won't work as well as a special guitar controller. The poshest Rock Band Pro guitar is a real guitar, but has electronics in the neck to detect when a string is pressed against the each fret, presumably because Harmonix felt they couldn't do polyphonic frequency analysis accurately enough for the job.
From what I can see, the biggest downside to this is that they couldn't make a strong enough neck, while keeping within budget and fitting in the electronics -- so the Rock Band guitar has warnings against stringing it with any strings heavier than a set of 9s.
I like the idea of Rock Band 3, as a practice tool, but the money spent on that guitar could go towards a *nice* guitar.
I guess they should stop putting those marker dots between frets?
I think most guitarists at least glance at the fretboard when they're playing. I don't think I could reliably go from a chord at the nut to a barre on the 9th, blindfold.
But, I don't think you'll have much time to look at the fretboard in this game -- you'll be effectively sight-reading a tab as it scrolls past you.
This is the point: you want to play guitar, you just buy one. You want to learn to play, you might choose self-learning if you don't want to throw money at lessons. (Of course, you just want to have a nice time with friends, you go and play with them and be happy.)
I've played real guitar for 20 years.
I've watched videos of the Rock Band 3 "pro guitar" being used, and it looks like it would be a productive way of teaching yourself to play the guitar parts in those songs. It really is like following a tab, with a machine to tell you when you screw up. I assume there are practice options as in other Rock Band games, where you can isolate the part, slow it down, practice with a metronome etc.
Once you'd learned it, you'd need to plug into a real amp and practice some more to coax any kind of expression out of it, since Rock Band 3 doesn't concern itself with niceties such as muting and vibrato.
I'm not personally the kind of player who likes to replicate other people's solos -- but plenty of people are, and plenty of people enjoy listening to that. There's still value in doing this if you're an improviser, since it may reveal to you fingerings that you can incorporate into your improvisations.
Some museums are art within themselves.
Indeed, the Natural History Museum in London is a work of art, even though its contents mostly are not.
TFA rebuts this argument quite succinctly -- with an animation, even!
It seems to me that art is considered great based on the amount of emotional response it stirs up in the person interacting or observing whatever medium the art is based on.
TFA rebuts this with the example of a video of someone stomping on animals.
That said, loop it, give it a pretentious title, and display it in a gallery -- someone would call it art.
By the way a lot of non modern art isn't meant to inspire, force contemplation of life or challenge your philosophical views ... it's simply meant to be pretty and nothing else.
A lot of modern art (for certain definitions of modern) is meant to make you think about the the definition of "art", as we are doing now.
Duchamp's urinal, discussed in TFA, is a prime example of that. Duchamp is effectively saying to the viewer "OK, you think you know what art is -- but I've signed my name on a urinal I bought ready-made, given it a title, and they're showing it in a gallery. And you're standing looking at it, stroking your chin."
And then, as if to make things even harder, the first one's lost. There are several in galleries -- none more valid than the other. They're signed as Duchamp pieces, but he had an assistant fake his signature.
Now, you might look at something like that, and say, "no, in my opinion that's not art". But you'd be in disagreement with the "art world" -- the people who decide what goes in galleries -- so you'd be obliged to give it some thought. And having provoked that thought, does the piece now qualify as art?
If everything I had just described was a lie -- if in fact nobody has put a urinal in an art gallery; they've just talked about it -- would the the reflection about the nature of art that it inspires be just as valid? Or does the concept only become worthwhile when you implement it? What if I made a "game" in which I just plonked a urinal from a 3D model library into the Quake, and allowed you to virtually walk around it?
I think it's fascinating.
See, you're starting to get it.
I do recommend Koyaanisqatsi though, even though I have to copy/paste its name rather than type it.